I'm Unable To Use SL, But I Exceed Minimum Requirements

[Zara Cavalieri]

I decided to get back onto SL (I used to play a few years ago) but I cannot stay in-game for more than a minute before I get the little blue circle for when an application is about to crash and then I get the message 'Darn. You have been logged out of Second Life. This region may be experiencing trouble....' 

Well I know it's not the region. I've tried the official viewer, Phoenix and Singularity and all work similarly. My internet connection is fine. All other websites are fast (ish) and I can download large files very quickly.

My PC has the following specifications:

- AMD Phenom Quad Core 2.20 GHz

- 4GB RAM

- Windows 7 64bit

- ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series (with the latest driver)

It seems that I am above the minimum requirements and my RAM is above what's recommended. My graphics card is average, but it shouls be good enough. I'm sure I have used SL on this PC in the past, but I can't remember if it was before upgrades or not. I set the graphics in the SL viewer to medium and turned off VBO as advised in another thread.

I have no idea what's wrong and now I fear I can't play at all. My PC happily plays 720p files and will act as a media server for my PS3, but it cannot play 1080p movies properly due to lag. Sometimes when I have various programmes/tabs/videos playing (or loading) at one time I will get an error saying that I run out of memory and sometimes if I ignore it my PC will just turn off or get the BSOD, but this is rare. The only thing I can think of that may affect things is that I turned off the feature for using my harddrive as an overflow from RAM, as an anonymising technique, however this should not be a problem as I still have 4GB RAM and I tend to run SL alone, or maybe with music from Windows Media Player.

Any ideas? I wouldn't know if I have graphic card issues, or really how to test that I don't. I also don't know about overheating.

[Pseudolukian]

First of all 4gb with Windows 7 and 64bit is really really bad.

You should at least set all graphics to the lowest value not only on the viewer more important is, that you disable any high quality graphic settings of windows

[Zara Cavalieri]

Why is 4GB RAM bad with Win7 64bit?

I can look into dropping the quality in all graphics.

[Nefertiti Nefarious]

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Zara Cavalieri wrote:

Why is 4GB RAM bad with Win7 64bit?

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Because of the poor memory management in Windows. It loads itself into RAM first and whatever is left over is used to run software. Also, it automatically loads a bunch of software at startup just in case you want to use it. It makes the software seem to load faster, but at the expense of memory space for programs like SL.

 

To minimize the load, find out how to tell it to NOT automatically load anything at startup, and shut down anything you are not using. Close it, don't just minimize the window.

 

[Zara Cavalieri]

I have always controlled what starts up automatically. If what you say about Windows loading itself through RAM, then it sounds as though there's not much I can do to stop it; unless I change to 32, which at this time is too much hassle.

I still fail to see why it can't even run SL though; I don't see why it should be too demanding when it can handle several other programmes.

 

EDIT: I should also mention that I have two monitors; one is 1920x1200 and the other is 1680 x 1050. Would this have an effect?

 

EDIT 2: I went through 'msconfig' startups and disabled pretty much everything. I monitored the CPU/Memory usage and at the time of crashing my Physical Memory was at 46% and my CPU fluctuated between 9% and about 50%. Upon booting Firestorm the CPU went up to about 80%, but then it came back down and over a minute later it crashed. Also I had two tabs open on Google Chrome. I noticed that on top of Firestorm there are 4 SL plugins that are running as processes, one of which is voice (but I think I disabled voice - don't have a mic). I'm truly lost.

[Thinkerer Melville]

There are various causes for the problem you describe.  Here is some info and suggestions

Login fails? Lots of logouts?

Dont assume that there is no connection problem because your browser works fine-- SL uses ports not used by browsers. Your router can fail on those ports and not affect the browser. Other articles that may help:

Troubleshooting: The viewer screwer

Does your SL run slow,  show grey people, crash easily, make you a cloud? 2012

 

TKR

[Zara Cavalieri]

Thanks for the links.

I cleared the cache and reinstalled. I plugged my internet into my PC directly and strangely I couldn't get internet access (even after a reboot). It's possibly i'd need to set up a new network with a user/pass, because maybe the router (I got it with my internet package) logs me in automatically, but i'm guessing. I went into the router and added a list of 'services' that contained the TCP/UDP ports as listed by LL.

Everything is set to pretty much the lowest setting (that I could find) and I disabled media and sounds. I even set the maximum bandwidth to max, hoping that it'd take priority over anything else. I really don't know what else i'm supposed to do. These things are never straigh forward with me

[Zara Cavalieri]

Alright I may have made some progress. After reading through older threads I decided to look at my packet loss. I'm losing 13.6%, which is apparently very very bad, so that should be my problem. Now i'll have to look at how to get around this.

[Thinkerer Melville]

The packet loss is the cause.  That will give the effects you are seeing.  But don't set bandwidth high.  Set it low--at 500 or less.  SL assumes you have the bandwidth you say.  If you don't have that, it will still tramsmit at that rate and you will lose packets.  

TKR